60 
MAMMALIA. 
[Chap. I. 
India, is found in droves in all parts of the island where 
vegetation and water are abundant. 
The elephant, the lord paramount of the Ceylon 
forests, is to be met with in every district, on the 
confines of the woods, in the depths of which he finds 
concealment and shade during the hours when the 
sun is high, and from which he emerges only at twi- 
light to wend his way towards the rivers and tanks, 
where he luxuriates till dawn, when he again seeks the 
retirement of the deep forests. This noble animal fills 
so dignified a place both in the zoology and ceconomy of 
Ceylon, and his habits in a state of nature have been so 
much misunderstood, that I shall devote a separate 
section to his defence from misrepresentation, and to an 
exposition of what, from observation and experience, 
I believe to be his genuine character when free in 
his native domains. But this seems the proper place 
to allude to a recent discovery in connexion with 
the elephant, which strikingly confirms a conjecture 
which I ventured to make elsewhere *, relative to the 
isolation of Ceylon, and its distinctness, in many re- 
markable particulars, from the great continent of India. 
Every writer who previously treated of the island, includ- 
ing the accomplished Dr. Davy and the erudite Lassen, 
was contented, by a glance at its outline and a reference 
to its position on the map, to assume that Ceylon was a 
fragment, which in a very remote age had been torn from 
the adjacent mainland, by some convulsion of nature. 
Hence it was taken for granted that the vegetation 
which covers arid the races of animals which inhabit it, 
must be identical with those of Hindustan ; to which 
1 Ceylon, $c, by Sir J. Emerson Tennent, vol. i. pp. 7, 13, 85, 160, 
183, n., 205, 270, &c. 
